Notes, Thoughts, Art, Books and Poetry:
The novel “The Serape Notebook: A Love Story” by Raul Hernandez is available on Amazon. You can find it in a paperback edition, which offers free shipping on qualifying offers. For more details or to purchase, you can visit the Amazon website directly.
SERAPE NOTEBOOK NOVEL CLICK HERE
The Dead Sea Bar and Grill is about tough guys trying to hide tender hearts and painful pasts who get involved in an elaborate scheme to con Arab and other oil barons during the height of the 1977 oil embargo.
BOOK INTRODUCTION:
It is 1977.
Oil is in short supply, disco is in full bloom, and the New York Yankees are on the verge of winning the World Series after a long drought.
An aging heavyweight boxer, Frankie “Frankenstein” Finch, lives in the dank basement of a dying church in New York City. Frankie took the janitor’s job after his crumbling building was about to be demolished.
The church pastor is a con man who scams the elderly and minority parishioners.
Decades earlier, his young boxing career was cut short by a crooked cop’s bullet when he refused to dive weeks before a heavyweight title fight.
In this church, janitorial services include setting rat traps, spreading buckets throughout the church when it rains, and mending old church hymnals.
Life is very bleak.
One day, Frankie decides to end his life after an inner voice tells him to do so. When he is about to pull the trigger with a gun he borrowed from a friend, a pint-size pimp Butch Badovich comes into the basement via a creaky, rusty spiral staircase.
Butch offers Frankie a job as his collector and enforcer. Butch runs a pimp business and has a stable of women who are too fat, too ugly, or too old. So Butch must give credit to shut-ins.
Frankie goes to work for Butch and learns about Butch’s dream: make enough money and move to Arizona to get out of the New York City cold.
The dream is withering because the pimp business is barely in the black.
Butch bets all his pimp business savings at the racetrack on a horse that is a very long shot. The horse wins; Butch collects tens of thousands of dollars from the bet.
Enter Vincent Primello, fresh out of prison and needing a bundle of cash to set up an elaborate scam to extort nearly a million dollars from Arab and other oil barons.
Primello convinces Butch to finance his race track winnings on the scam, but Primello must agree to let Butch and Frankie help him with the con.
******************************
Excerpt from the Dead Sea Bar and Grill Novel:
“All this God-given talent is being pissed away in this shit hole with Pastor Houdini,” said Butch.
“Erasmus. His name is Pastor Erasmus,” said Frankie.
“Whatever. Does the parole board know he opened up another religious crazy house? They shut one down in Jersey, I heard. What a con.” Butch pointed at the tattered poster of Joe Louis that Frank duct-taped on the wall. “I’m offering you better than what Joe ended up with. What do you say?”
“I don’t want to kill anybody unless it’s for a good cause,” Frankie said. “Almost killed Vinnie the Viking. ”
“Yeah, I heard about that. Look, just ease up a little.”
“Maybe I could.”
***************
The Dead Sea Bar and Grill novel: Click Here
The Dead Sea Bar and Grill Screenplay: Click Here
Dead Sea Bar and Grill Book on Sale at Amazon Books
The Rivera Girls
Screenplay by Raul Hernandez
A comedy script about a father of four daughters and his struggles to navigate the challenges of raising his daughters in the 1980s.
Ricardo has four daughters: Gabriela, Vanessa, Nikki, and Alex. He longs for a son to share his interests in sports and bonding at his “man cave.”
Nikki gets into trouble with her parents for getting a nose piercing and a temporary tattoo without her parents’ permission. This leads to conflict with her strict father, who lays down the law about no
modifications allowed on bodies. No exceptions.
The Rivera Girls Script: Click Here
Wordsmith items on sale at MindsEdgeArt, click here: REDBUBBLE
WORDS
I hold wordsmiths in the highest esteem.
Their craft is a sacred art, casting magical spells that weave tapestries of silver and gold threads. They breathe life into the inanimate, conjuring images and emotions that make us laugh, cry, or simply marvel at their beauty.
The power of their words can lift us to the heavens or plunge us into the depths of despair. Some words linger, stirring our souls and leaving lasting imprints on our heart.
Serape Notebook
“We were overworked, and nobody was getting rich. But it didn’t matter. We stayed because we loved this profession. Loved chasing the stories. Nailing some City Hall asshole for corruption. Now, it’s all about fluff. Entertainment and fluff. Trends and titillation. The passion is gone. It’s left the building. Checked out with Elvis when the corporate assholes checked in.” — The Serape Notebook
Two brothers, Diego Carreon Vega and his older brother, Carlos, growing up in West Texas during the time of the Vietnam War is the setting for the novel, The Serape Notebook.
Diego is a journalist who describes how the war changed his family after his brother Carlos joins the U.S. Army and is sent to Vietnam.
“The Voice”
“A BOYHOOD SUMMER”
EXCERPT FROM SERAPE NOTEBOOK
“The Vietnam War didn’t strut down the barrio with the boldness of some high-stepping drum major in front of a high school marching band going down Main Street.
It did none of that.
It came tapping, gently tapping, on the front door like a magazine salesman with a silly grin and a cheap polyester suit. Uncle Sam was selling a bloody war that would change everything in the barrio and in America.
Before the Vietnam War escalated, life in the barrio was a bright yellow, loose-fitting tuxedo, calmly pacing inside a pair of soft huaraches.
People got married, divorced, worked hard, had kids, planned weddings, and hosted quinceañeras — those rite-of-passage celebrations into womanhood for 15-year-old Mexican girls. Kids cruised late at night.
Pinatas were busted in backyards. Baptismos and old high school rivalries thrived. Treks to go to downtown Juarez after the El Paso bars closed were strong.
Vietnam changed everything.”
The Serape Notebook
***********************************************
The Dead Sea Bar and Grill novel: Click Here
The Dead Sea Bar and Grill Screenplay: Click Here
Jack Fuentes, a burned-out newspaper reporter in El Paso, stumbles into a diabolical plot just when he’s about to hand in his resignation and put newsrooms and deadlines in the rearview mirror of his life.
Stepping on the Devil’s Tail
Excerpt from the book “Stepping on the Devil’s Tail”
“Bogota Bogeymen. Fuck. Bad News.”
“Right. But Fernando and Topo were unusual, freaks of nature in the cartel world, you might say.”
“How so,” I asked.
“On the surface, they looked like a couple of tourists who had just stepped off a Carnival cruise ship.”
“Wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
“Most definitely. Cunning too. Let me put it this way, if there’s a Narco Hall of Fame, they’d be in it and have their faces on trading cards. They’ll kill for fun and profits. They’d kill in front of the Virgin Mary.”
— Stepping on the Devil’s Tail.
THE POETRY OF RAUL HERNANDEZ
Life is like a gleam of light between two eternities.
Who we spend our time with is what matters. Whose hand we hold and heart we touch. Who makes us laugh and makes us cry. It gives us joy, lets us be us, and still likes us despite our shortcomings and downfalls.
They become our teachers, lovers, and those who listen, really listen, and can feel the thread of cold air that sometimes runs through our hearts when we hurt. In the end, that’ll be all that matters. Who we shared these moments, the special ones, and those hours, the long and precious ones?
Who we spend this time with, share our thoughts, our lives, and what we left behind inside their hearts. What will be our last dream? Who will be holding our hands as we take our last breath?
That’ll be all we take as we slip into the silence of forever.
OFTEN
BY RAUL HERNANDEZ
I often find you when the sun is kissing the earth goodbye and shadows are slowly crumbling before my eyes. And in the distance, I see your smile, and within, I feel your presence.